31 comments:

Glad to see UW make the 25th spot. But maybe drop Boise State --Hawaii kept it too close, imo --out of the top 25 and put Wake Forest in. That way you'll look prescient when the Demon Deacons play Rutgers in the National Championship.

Also, I do want to make a comment about the Inertia in the polls. Honestly, I think it's a good thing. Here's my reasoning: there's such a small sample size of voters in both polls, that if everyone completely re-evaluated on a weekly basis, the poll results would swing wildly week to week. The fans would HATE that. Sure it'd be more honest, but too chaotic to maintain as a relevant system for long.

ND at #10? Does ND deserve to move up because unranked MSU melted down?

What did West Virginia do to deserve the #3 spot? The #3 team in the country should not struggle against East Carolina.

LSU in front of Texas..this is an on-going debate. UT lost to the #1 team, LSU the #4 team (at the time of the loss)some argue that LSU looked better in the loss than UT did, but this assumes that Ohio State and Auburn are equal. Tough call.

I'm going to call next week SET-UP SATURDAY, because the week after is Texas/Oklahoma; LSU/Flordia; Tennessee/Georgia; Michigan/Michigan St.; Oregon/Cal. that's going to be a good week of college football.

WVU at #3 definitely looks like an intertia pick. I have them at #4, but that's a drop for me from #2.

Actually, I'm with chrth. I think the inertia in the polls is overall a good thing so that things aren't wildly chaotic, especially at the beginning. And since human nature will never allow us to go poll-less for the first month of the season like would probably be best, the current system works pretty well.

But if you're going to go with a no-inertia motto I think WVU at #2 doesn't work. Also Georgia at #11 is a joke. If you woke up from a 3 month coma tomorrow and looked at Georgia's current poll resume, you'd put them #11? Really? They've done... what, exactly?

Iowa could have beaten Illinois by 40 if they wanted to. They dropped into cover-3 and stayed in it the whole game lettting Illinois' freshman QB throw 3 picks (with a 4th from Brasic). We played enough cover-3/cover-4 that the Illinois paper mistook CB Shada (and his 2 picks) for a safety.

On offense, Iowa threw downfield MAYBE three times all game, and ran the ball probably 15 straight times at one point in the 2nd half.

All this, and they still would have covered (minus 21.5) had the first and second string FS not both been out for a drive (Paschal, the starter, was just resting a tweaked hammy, he's fine for OSU).

I think Purdue deserves at least a little consideration for #25. The defense is improving each week and don't let the yardage fool you, it has come up with some critical stops after giving up a bunch of yards in each of the past three weeks. Three times it has come up with goal line interceptions to make teams walak away with no points at critical junctures, and it has blocked two field goals as well that were momentum changers.

With an offense that is very balanced, as well as very good, they have a punchers chance to go into South bend and pull an upset this week, sicne Notre Dame can't stop the French Army right now.

I am not predicting a win, as I still think Notre Dame will pull away, but it should be much closer than people will thnk and if things break right, the Boilers can be 5-0 and ruin Notre Dame's season.

As a long time UGA fan, who suffered through the worst performance of a supremely talented squad as I did Saturday, I say definitely drop them out of the top ten. No question about it.

Then I went home from the game and watched the WVU game, the OSU game, the UF game, and the ND game.

All of those teams were playing teams with a significant difference in talent. Probably none with quite the distinction in talent as UF-UK, UGA-CU and WVU-ECU.

I was tortured throughout the game with our inability to do anything offensively or defensively against Colorado, but in retrospect, yes it took a 4th quarter "defining moment" to win the game, CU didn't do anything offensively after the first drive of the 2nd quarter.

I felt ND played worse in the win than UGA, but got the win. I felt all of these teams played poorly, but did what needed to be done to win.

Also, just from a fan's perspective. The ref's first holding call on CU's line was in the 2nd quarter. After that(with other holding calls) the gaping holes for their RBs weren't quite as gaping anymore.

I'll admit that the only ECU game I've seen in... a while? ever? was this weekend, but a #1 caliber team shouldn't struggle that much against a team FoxSports ranks 82/119 and CBS SportsLine ranks 79/119. I only dropped WVU to 4, but then I'll admit to emplying a bit of inertia in my... um, calculations.

*yawn*. I'm sick of everyone saying this is the week that OSU loses to my team blah blah blah.

Heard that all 2003.

Not quite as bad as Doug Flutie saying during halftime of the OSU/PSU game that USC deserved to be #1...funny how he shut up when they were up 3-0 on Arizona with 13:30 left in the 3rd.

It was so wet in Columbus that I could barely hold my 6 dollar Coke. Both teams played in the same conditions, hence the low scoring and lack of passing.

When the season started most bucks fans were worried about the games @iowa and @msu. Night game, on the road, alcohol fueled fans. At least after this week I don't have to worry about MSU anymore...but don't tell me that Iowa is going to destroy OSU. Big Ten games are always close (games against Illinois and Indiana don't count as Big Ten).

Dude, nothing will kill the legitimacy of a homegrown system faster than seeing Wake Forest at #6.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the standings do not take anything into account except for wins and losses and the ratings of the opponents at the time of the game. If Wake is #6, that is an immediate reflection of how they've performed through this point in the season. Most rankings are based on people's opinions and expectations of what a team should be based on their supposed talent.

I also encourage you to wait and see how the rating system plays out at the end of the season. I've finished inputting last year's data (including bowl games) and will be posting it on my blog if you're interested.

Well, it's nice to see that after picking Cal to lose to ASU, you've completely neglected any comment as to the absolute domination Cal had in all aspects of the game. At least you're remaining a consistant Cal hater. I'm really curious what it's going to take for the members of the media to forgive a bad opening game. It appears as though Notre Dame has been forgiven after being even more thoroughly decimated AT HOME and then coming back the next week and beating an UNRANKED opponent. Ahhh...the media bias, you'd think after all this time rooting for Cal I'd be used to it.

When Florida struggles against FSU talk to me about who shouldn't struggle against whom.

Florida struggled against a team "ranked" by CBS at 65. (Kentucky).

ECU was/is ranked ~80, and WVU "struggled" to a 27-10 win.

Auburn only managed 38pts against Buffalo (117 on CBS).

This is college, not the NFL. If you lose in college, you are done for the year, so coaches like Tressel who have won a national championship tend to get a little conservative with the playcalling in a game where it is a struggle to get the ball to the QB from Center.

Tressel doesn't like to blow teams like Bobby Bowden or Steve Spurrier. He likes to win games with defense and clock management. I'll take that all the way to Arizona.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.